When No One Is Watching

Theo tries to forget the memory of his first dead body, heightened by his night digging for Sydney’s mother. Sydney remembers the man who pretended to be from Con Ed and tells Theo about her Uber driver. She considers young Preston’s arrest, Drea’s disappearance, and the bed bugs in Drea’s bed, wondering if someone is purposefully trying to mess with the neighborhood.

A moving truck pulls up next door. A white couple, college student Melissa’s parents, greet Theo and Sydney. They say they’ve bought Mr. Perkins’s house and are moving in. When Sydney challenges the plausibility of Mr. Perkins selling his house without saying goodbye to his neighborhood, Melissa’s father warns her that he’s close to the chief of police. At Theo’s house, Sydney proposes that VerenTech is using the same city planning and financial tactics as the Dutch West India Company—ones used to lay claim over Black people’s homes and personhoods. Sydney mentions Kavaughn, a neighborhood friend who was supposed to help her with historical research but left to visit family and never came back. She shows Theo a picture of Kavaughn, and he recognizes him as the drugged man who ran into him outside the abandoned hospital. They Google VerenTech and discover that it is a shareholder in BVT, the real estate company that William Bilford works for—the company that has been buying up Black residents’ houses. They also own private prisons.

Sydney and Theo speculate that VerenTech is using Brooklyn to populate their private prisons and bolster property-buying. While Theo is in the kitchen, Sydney notices Drea’s missing air-conditioning unit in one of the house’s windows. She wonders if “it wasn’t that far of a stretch to believe they could hire a moderately attractive man to spend a few days seducing a lonely, broken woman before finishing the job” (273). Then, she sees a private OurHood group on Kim’s iPad discussing Melissa’s parents’ arrival and the need to get rid of Sydney herself. She spots Theo’s packed duffel bag and William Bilford’s business card. Sydney decides that Theo is part of the plot to raze her neighborhood.

Sydney goes back to her house and finds her mother’s gun. She sees Theo from her window, calling her and banging on the window. She picks up her phone, and he tells her that the man pretending to be from Con Ed is inside her house. He begs her to trust him, confessing that he’s been the one breaking in and stealing things, setting the white people in the neighborhood on edge. Sydney enters a servant’s stairwell, a staple of Brownstone houses when wealthier white families moved in decades ago. As Sydney navigates the secret passageway, she stumbles over Drea’s dead body.

Theo crosses the street to Sydney’s house with a knife in one hand, Kim’s iPad in the other, and a small crowbar in his pocket, thinking about the messages on Kim’s iPad and the memory of seeing Kim’s father’s name on the shareholder list for VerenTech and the attorney list for BVT. When he enters Sydney’s house, she’s already waiting for him, gun drawn. The iPad flashes and both Sydney and Theo see a message asking if Sydney has been taken care of, with emojis of a Black woman and a knife. While Sydney demands answers from Theo, he spots a shadow and throws the iPad at the intruder. The man shoots at Sydney, and Sydney shoots back. A bullet hits the man, and Sydney and Theo keep him on the ground; Theo stabs him in the side. Theo takes the man’s phone and unlocks it with his thumb. He changes the phone’s password and checks its messages, finding an exchange between the man and Kim (including Kim’s nudes and talk of getting rid of Sydney).

Sydney and Theo look at a private OurHood group called “Rejuvenation.” In it, the white residents discuss getting rid of Sydney and paying off their contacts in the news media to avoid a scandal. Kim posts that the next phase of rejuvenation is ready to commence. People call for Sydney from the street: The Black residents, having heard the gunshots, gathered to check on her.

The power in the neighborhood is out—except for the abandoned hospital, now lit. Theo suspects the hospital is where the “Rejuvenation” meeting is taking place. A police fleet enters the street, demanding that residents stop “rioting” and go home. Sydney and Theo run to the hospital, the latter carrying the Con Ed man’s gun. They open the hospital’s cellar doors and are discovered by a cop in riot gear. Sydney pushes him and hears a sickening crack as he lands.

Sydney and Theo enter the cellar. They take the dead cop’s Taser and gun, noticing that his gun is the same as that of the Con Ed man—the latter also being a cop. The cellar connects to a series of underground tunnels. Sydney and Theo walk until they hear William Bilford’s voice. William and a brunette woman open the doors with a gurney and see Theo. Sydney enters the light with her gun drawn. She identifies the brunette woman as the lawyer who refused to help her mother get her house back. The lawyer retorts that the problem with Black people is that they expect help but can’t even show up to their appointments. Sydney shoots her in the head, killing her, then points the gun at William. William pushes the gurney towards Sydney and knocks her down. As he reaches for an alarm, Theo shoots and kills him.

Sydney and Theo put the bodies on the gurney and move forward. They find a room with windows, where they see an elderly Black woman with vacant eyes and tubes in her arm. Sydney tells Theo that this woman, Doris Payne, is the person whose house he took.

Sydney and Theo find other windowed rooms, labeled as “test subjects.” Two of the test subjects are Abdul, the former owner of the bodega, and Mr. Perkins. Mr. Perkins lunges for Sydney, setting off an alarm. Two white women run into the hallway as Theo pulls Sydney into a vacant room. The women enter Mr. Perkins’s room followed by Theo, gun drawn. As one of the women reaches for her own gun, Sydney steps forward and shoots her. Sydney demands answers from the other woman, who tells her that they’re trying to find a cure for opioid abuse. Sydney and Theo take the women’s keys and unlock the doors to the testing rooms. However, they can’t call the police nor can they move the abductees without hurting them. They decide to see what else they can find.

Sydney and Theo climb stairs until they reach the actual hospital. Theo recognizes the sound of Kim’s father’s voice. The pair approach the meeting and listen in as the group discusses their success so far. Theo enters the room, and a fight ensues. Theo shoots Kim’s father and Kim. Sydney and Theo return to the basement tunnels to help the abductees. They find two young white men and an older white man. The three men discuss testing “Feelbutrol” on Sydney and Theo. Sydney feels a prick in her back and blacks out.

Sydney and Theo are strapped to gurneys. The two younger men prepare them for testing but are struck down by Fitzroy and Gracie, two of Sydney’s Black neighbors who followed the pair to the hospital. The Black neighborhood has been piecing together VerenTech’s plan for some time, waiting for the right moment to strike. The rest of the neighbors are at the hospital, helping the abductees escape. Once everyone is far away from the hospital, the building is enveloped in flame, brightening the sky.

Sydney and Theo wake up next to each other in Ms. Candace’s house. The news reports that the VerenTech camp was burned down by a transformer fire; several VerenTech employees are dead, but no foul play is suspected. Some neighbors show Sydney and Theo OurHood posts on the slow but brutal gentrification of neighborhoods by VerenTech all over the country. Sydney checks for her gun when she hears police sirens in the distance, then sits down to eat.